Built to Last: What Old Buildings in Iceland and Ireland Reveal About Durability
The introduction to Built to Last: Field Notes from Iceland and Ireland — a JR DBA series on historic construction, material durability, building failure, and what older buildings can teach us about renovation and existing-building work in Oregon.
I am traveling through Iceland and Ireland to document historic buildings, castles, ruins, traditional construction, and modern interventions in two exceptionally demanding climates. This series is what comes back with me.
I evaluate existing buildings from both sides of the counter. I am a licensed architect in Oregon and Washington, and I hold four ICC certifications as a residential and commercial plans examiner and building inspector. That combination shapes how I look at a building — not only how it was designed, but how it would be reviewed, where it would fail, and what a jurisdiction would require to bring it back into use.
These buildings were not designed under contemporary building codes. Many were built without reinforced concrete, engineered lumber, waterproofing membranes, mechanical ventilation, or the enclosure systems we rely on today. Some have remained in service for centuries.
Others failed spectacularly.
Both outcomes are worth studying.
The Question Behind the Series
If you own or are evaluating a building in Oregon built before the 1960s, the practical question is rarely whether it is charming. It is whether the assembly you are about to alter still works the way it was designed to work — and whether your proposed repair will support that logic or interrupt it.
That is the question this series is built around. Every observation from the field comes back to it.
Why Iceland and Ireland
Iceland and Ireland both have wet, exposed climates, but their building traditions developed in very different directions.
Icelandic builders responded to intense wind, cold, volcanic activity, limited traditional building materials, and a landscape where exposure changes dramatically from one site to another. Turf construction, stone foundations, corrugated-metal cladding, and the extensive use of concrete all reflect those constraints.
Ireland offers a different record. Its castles, churches, monastic sites, estate houses, and urban buildings show centuries of mass-masonry construction, expansion, abandonment, repair, and reuse. In many places a single building contains work from several periods, each responding to a new function or a different understanding of how buildings should perform.
Oregon shares neither climate nor construction history with either country. But several conditions overlap:
Long periods of rain and limited drying conditions
Wind-driven water at exposed sites
Freeze-thaw cycles in some regions
Aging buildings modified repeatedly over time
Historic materials combined with modern repairs
Existing buildings adapted for uses they were never designed to accommodate
Those similarities make the comparison useful, as long as the differences are understood.
What I Look For
At each site, the questions are practical rather than stylistic.
How does the building manage water?
Water is the most persistent cause of building deterioration. The evidence is at wall bases, roof edges, parapets, openings, drainage patterns, mortar joints, staining, biological growth, and anywhere water has entered or become trapped.
Traditional mass-masonry walls handle moisture differently from modern framed walls. They absorb, store, and later release water rather than relying on a thin exterior layer to stop every drop. That system performs well when materials are compatible and drying potential is preserved, and it deteriorates quickly when impermeable coatings or hard cement mortars trap moisture inside the wall. I have written about that failure mode in more detail here.
What do the materials reveal?
Local materials often explain the form of a historic building as much as architectural preference does.
Stone type and shape, masonry coursing, wall thickness, mortar composition, arches, lintels, buttresses, roof structures, and the transitions between construction periods all carry information. Where a building has partially collapsed, the exposed construction reveals details that would ordinarily stay concealed.
Why did this building survive?
Age alone does not prove that a building was well designed. A surviving building may have been extensively reconstructed, continuously maintained, or simply favored by conditions. The unsuccessful buildings of the same period are no longer standing to be studied.
So the more useful evidence is intervention: repointing, structural stabilization, roof replacement, drainage improvements, and the repairs that kept a particular structure in service.
Durability is rarely the result of one extraordinary material. It is the result of compatible materials, good water management, reasonable structural behavior, regular maintenance, and the ability to repair one component without damaging the whole.
What caused the visible failures?
Ruins explain building performance more clearly than restored buildings do. Unprotected wall tops, failed roof-to-wall connections, deteriorated mortar, foundation movement, incompatible patches, cracking at openings, and chronic water exposure all record how deterioration progressed.
Oregon adds a force most historic Irish buildings never had to resist: significant earthquake loading. A thick stone wall can survive centuries of rain and wind while remaining highly vulnerable to out-of-plane seismic failure. Durability under one set of conditions does not guarantee safety under another — which is the central problem with unreinforced masonry in this state.
When a Building Changes Use
Few historic buildings remain as originally constructed. Openings are added or infilled. Floor levels change. Roofs are replaced. Defensive structures become residences, museums, and hotels. Utilities, stairs, elevators, fire protection, and accessibility improvements are inserted into buildings that were never designed to receive them.
This is the part of the series most directly connected to my work in Oregon, and it is where owners are most often surprised.
A change of use is not a question of rearranging rooms. It can affect structural loading, fire-resistive construction, occupant load and exiting, accessibility, energy performance, and mechanical systems — and in an alteration, those requirements are triggered by code, not by preference. A tenant improvement that looks cosmetic on a floor plan can carry obligations that reach the structure, the enclosure, and the path of egress.
From Medieval Walls to Oregon Projects
The useful question is not how to build the way people did five hundred years ago. It is what those builders understood about their materials and environment — and whether we have preserved that logic or interrupted it.
A building may have survived because thick walls, a compact form, protected openings, and a simple roof shed water effectively. A modern addition that changes drainage patterns or introduces incompatible materials can undo that balance in a few seasons.
A ruin may show that walls stood long after the roof was gone, and also how fast deterioration accelerated once the wall tops and interior were exposed.
The Field Notes to Come
The series will follow several themes rather than a fixed itinerary:
Climate and scarcity — how Icelandic buildings, traditional and modern, respond to wind, rain, cold, and limited materials
Water in mass masonry — why historic stone walls manage moisture differently from modern framed walls
Deterioration and failure — what castles and ruins reveal about how buildings come apart
Adaptation — the challenges of bringing historic buildings into modern use, and what that suggests for Oregon renovation work
Two ways of building — wet-climate mass masonry compared with Oregon light-frame construction
Each installment will link back to this post, and I will add links here as they publish.
I will be photographing construction details, repairs, deterioration, drainage conditions, openings, roof edges, wall bases, and the visible seams between old and new work — and connecting those observations to Oregon building practice, existing-building assessment, and current code requirements.
Historic buildings are not templates for modern construction. They are full-scale, long-term experiments in material compatibility, exposure, maintenance, adaptation, and failure.
Studied carefully, they still have a great deal to teach us.
Planning a renovation, change of use, or project involving an older building? JR-DBA provides existing-building assessments, code and feasibility reviews, and permit support for residential and small commercial projects across the Portland metro and Washington County. Please reach out to us for a free consult and to discuss your project.
